Response (3 page)

The only reason Sheffield was dead was because he was black. So it got called a “hate crime” and made headlines all over the country. People in Hillsboro were still pissed over that kind of attention, because now whenever somebody said the name “Hillsboro,” all anybody thought about was a place full of racist, murdering fucks.

“There's a street named after him in Centreville—Sheffield Street,” I said, struggling to sit up in my bed. “I was even standing on it one time.”

“They shoulda renamed Decatur Avenue for him,” Dad said. “Then everybody around here who shut their eyes to that killing would have had to see that sign every damn day.”

Deshawna's dad wouldn't let her go into Hillsboro alone after dark. So they both came to visit me that first night, bringing along my six-month-old baby daughter. Destiny Love didn't stop crying from the second she got into that hospital room. My head was pounding from the noise, but that didn't matter. I wanted her right there in my arms.

Nobody in my family had pressed me yet on what I was doing in Hillsboro.

Then Deshawna asked, “Noah, did they jump you before you got to the car lot to do that construction job, or after?”

I swallowed hard and answered over my daughter's wailing, “There was no construction job. We went there for the wrong reason—to boost a car.”

I could see the shame creep into my father's and Grandma's faces, especially in front of Deshawna's dad.

And by then the purple bruising around my eyes looked like a thief's mask, like the Hamburglar character at Mickey D's wore.

“But you didn't take nobody's car, right?” Mom asked, defiant. “Then why did they beat you with that bat? It was because you're black. That's why! And nobody's gonna twist it around!”

After the shame left my father's face, he began to stare darts at me.

I wanted to hide. But there was nowhere to go, except under the sheets.

The next morning, the doctor said it was all right for the detectives to ask me questions. They showed me a bunch of mug shots, too, and I picked out all three of those kids who'd beat me.

“That's the one swinging the bat,” I said, stamping my finger down into the middle of the fat kid's face. “He was at Carver High with me for a hot minute.”

“That's Charles Scaturro—known on the streets as Charlie Scat,” said the black detective. “He's got a history of assaults on nonwhites.”

The kid with the goatee was named Joseph Spenelli.

“Scaturro and Spenelli are being held without bail. The third suspect you identified, Thomas Rao, is also in custody.
He's
cooperating with the investigation,” added his white partner.

“Good. Let them turn on each other now,” Grandma said.

“But this Rao won't get a free pass for talking?” Dad asked, concerned.

“Nobody will,” the white detective answered like he meant it. “We don't play those kind of games.”

“We've determined that none of the suspects knew you were there to steal a car before the beating. So they weren't acting as vigilantes, trying to take the law into their own hands,” said his partner. “And because racial epithets were used during the attack, this is going to be prosecuted as a hate crime.”

Mom stood there applauding over that.

“Amen,” she said between claps. “Amen.”

But those words—“hate crime”—echoed in my ears.

I went to sleep that night with the worst headache I'd ever had.

And the next morning, I woke up the same way.

 

CHARLES SCATURRO INTERVIEW

Chapter
THREE

THAT SATURDAY, WHILE I WAS STILL IN THE hospital, there was a big march through Hillsboro. Black leaders showed up from all over the city, and there were even two busloads of brothers from out of town. The TV news said there were over six hundred protesters, with more than a hundred white folks mixed in. They started out on Decatur Avenue where Michael Sheffield died. Then they marched past the spot where I got beat down, and all the way to Spaghetti Park.

Dad and Mom were at the head of the line, walking hand in hand with those leaders. People had done the same thing when Sheffield got killed. Thousands of marchers showed up back then. Only Michael Sheffield wasn't there to steal a car, and I knew there wouldn't be any petition to name a street after me.

“The last time we were here, nearly two decades ago, they lined up to throw watermelon rinds at us. Now some of the store owners are offering us bottled water to drink as we march,” a gray-haired black city councilman told the TV reporter. “I guess that's progress for
this
community. But that hasn't solved the tensions and intolerable crime of racial violence.”

I watched the screen with Grandma. We were both hyped to see that many black people rolling through Hillsboro, and with a police escort, too. The news showed how Spaghetti Park was packed with white people protesting right back. Somebody even took a bedsheet and painted the words BATS AND CAR THIEVES inside a big circle with a strike mark through it.

“We don't want to be known for this kind of thing anymore,” said a lady being interviewed. “Good people live here. Can't we be left alone in our own neighborhoods? We just want this to all go away.”

The white nurse who was taking my temperature stopped cold while that lady was talking. Her eyes were glued to the TV screen and she was nodding her head, when Grandma said in a sharp tone, “That woman's wrong. You can't ignore a cancer. But she don't know nothing about healing like
you
do.”

“Why, th-ank you,” the nurse answered through half a stutter.

All together, I stayed at St. Luke's for nine days. My last two days there, I was feeling almost back to normal and itching to get out, with a rep from Dad's insurance company pushing for me to leave, too. When the doctors finally said I could go home, they made me ride downstairs in a wheelchair, because that was their insurance rule. But as soon as those sliding-glass doors opened, and I took my first hit of outside air without that sterilized hospital smell to it, I jumped up to my feet fast.

There were a few reporters waiting outside the hospital, and one asked how I felt about the kids who beat me. That's when Mom wrapped both her arms around me, and I didn't fight her on it.

“I don't feel anything for them, like they didn't feel anything for me,” I answered.

“Do you hate them, Noah?” another one asked.

“I don't have love for nobody like that,” I said, with my hand balling up into a fist at my side.

“How about the one with the bat, Charles Scaturro? Is there something you'd like to say to him?”

“How do you feel about white people, Noah? Can you trust them?”

The questions started flying.

“I just, just—” I said, shaking my head, without any more words coming.

There were only curses in my brain, and I knew enough not to say them.

Then my father told those reporters it was time for us to go home, and they backed off.

The first cab driver in line outside the hospital was white.

“We're going to East Franklin—Twelfth and Dupont,” Dad told him.

But the driver said, smug, “I don't go over by there. That's off my assigned route.”

It took a second for what he'd said to sink in.

Then Mom roared, “Take down his damn license number!”

“You see this?” my father called to the reporters. “What happened to my son—it doesn't change
shit
!”

 

Asa and Bonds had been keeping a low profile and hadn't come to see me in the hospital even once. I didn't hold it against them, though. I'd have been covering my ass, too, if I could, hoping the cops wouldn't find any charges against me. But the second day I was home, Bonds called me on my cell to say they were both coming over and Mom overheard me talking.

“Tell your criminal-minded friends they're not welcome inside this apartment,” Mom said, cold. “And from now on, as long as you're livin' under this roof, Noah, I want to know where you are, twenty-four/seven.”

So I watched out the window and went downstairs to meet them on the stoop as they turned the corner. Every building on the block was an exact Xerox copy of mine—a four-story, eight-family apartment house filled with black families.

Only the colors on the
outside
of them were different.

Even as a little kid digging in a flower box with a toy steam shovel, I remember wanting to plow those houses under and rebuild each one again to be special.

Halfway down the block there were a bunch of kids in bathing suits making noise, running through the spray of a fire hydrant with a sprinkler cap on it. Asa and Bonds must have ducked through, too, because I could see their wet footprints behind them, fading into the hot pavement.

“Daaaamn,” said Asa, seeing the patch of stitches in my head. “That's no joke when they operate on somebody's skull.”

“How you been holding up, dog?” Bonds asked as I gave them both a pound, before pulling them in close for a hug. “You know those crackers can't break a strong black man.”

“I'm all right. I guess,” I answered.

That's when somebody's grandmother, from a stoop across the street, called out, “Noah, God bless you,” and blew me a kiss.

“You a celebrity, Noah.” Asa grinned. “Everybody's talking 'bout how you stand for something now—almost like Rosa Parks.”

“Nah, I'm just history in my own crib,” I said, looking up at Mom peeping us through the curtains of our third-floor window. “I'm the most famous dude under house arrest in East Franklin.”

“I know it,” moaned Bonds. “My mom's got the shackles out, too—
Where ya goin'? Whataya doin'? Who ya be with?—
meanwhile I'm thinking, my boy almost got killed. It's time for war.”

“Nobody can touch them punks,” Asa said. “You
know
they're in protective custody, each with a cell to himself. Cops can't put those dudes in population. Niggas will tear their asses up.”

That was the first time I'd heard that word
nigger
since Scat screamed it at me. And suddenly, I didn't like it any better coming easy from Asa's mouth.

“One of them's out,” said Bonds. “It was on the radio before.”

I felt the blood rushing to my brain, and all I could see was red.

“Which?” I asked.

“One whose father's a detective, ratting out the other two,” answered Bonds. “The kid who kicked you. That Ra-O.”

“Oooh! Somebody needs to clap that cracker,” said Asa, throwing a right cross and stamping his foot on the steps.